


Copper Hair and Casts

by looking_for_life_elsewhere



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-12
Updated: 2017-02-12
Packaged: 2018-09-23 17:16:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9667760
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/looking_for_life_elsewhere/pseuds/looking_for_life_elsewhere
Summary: Even before he hangs up the phone, before he’s fully registered the situation, Mulder is already out the office door and struggling to pull his coat on as he heads for the stairwell. There’s no time to wait for the elevator.





	

Even before he hangs up the phone, before he’s fully registered the situation, Mulder is already out the office door and struggling to pull his coat on as he heads for the stairwell. There’s no time to wait for the elevator. He runs two red lights on the way to the hospital and seriously pushes his luck with a third one. His left knee bumps the steering wheel of the car while his leg bounces during one particularly stressful intersection. It takes him almost thirty minutes to get across the city and the winter sky is starting to turn grey when he turns into the hospital parking lot. His car protests, but he urges it up the small and icy hill into the hospital parking lot and slides, literally, into a vacant spot. Mulder puts the car in park and grabs his keys and wallet before running past the pay and display towards the door below the all too familiar capital letters.

He doesn’t stop to shake the snow out of his hair when he enters the emergency room, but instead turns to the first triage nurse he sees, a middle aged woman in brightly coloured scrubs.

“Excuse me,” Mulder says, trying hard to keep his voice calm, “I’m looking for someone who was admitted here.” A slight tremor as he says _looking_ betrays him and the nurse’s expression softens slightly as she motions him over to a desk with a computer and an obscene number of three ring binders.

“What’s the last name?” she asks, sitting down at the desk and typing several commands into the computer.

“Scully.”

“Ah yes, I was told to expect you. I filed the admittance papers about an hour ago—” she starts, but a glance at Mulder’s expression convinces her to skip to the information he’s clearly anxious to hear.

“Room 105, down the hallway on the left there. They should be getting ready to go up to radiology soon.”

He’s gone before she can finish the sentence, walking as quickly as he can down the hallway and using all the self-restraint he has to stop himself from breaking into a panicked sprint. He finds the room grabs the handle and braces himself, then opens the door.

“Daddy!”

Mulder’s heart swells as he enters the room, shutting the door quietly behind him. His son’s eyes may be red-rimmed and puffy, and his right arm might be propped up on a mountain of pillows in the hospital bed, but when he calls out to Mulder, William’s voice is happy. At Will’s exclamation, Scully twists in her chair just as Mulder bends down to quickly kiss the top of her head. “Hi,” she says quietly into his shirt. Mulder squeezes her shoulder, then turns to their son. “Hey buddy, what happened to you?” he asks, brushing back some of Will’s unruly hair.

“Mommy says I might have got a, um, a uh, a green frapture in my arm,” Will sniffles. Mulder looks back at Scully briefly and raises his eyebrows. She responds by giving him the _He’s your son too_ look that she has perfected during the last seven years. Oblivious, Will continues his story. “We were skating on the field trip at school and we were racing from one end of the rink to th’other and I forgot to stop and I hit the boards but I won the race!”

“Well good for you little one, but I think maybe this is a sign that your Mom and I shouldn’t put too much stock into your future as a professional figure skater,” Mulder says. He leans forward and kisses Will’s forehead then straightens and pulls another chair over to sit down next to Scully. She takes his hand and he is about to ask her to explain the exact nature of a green frapture, when the nurse from the desk station and another doctor come in. The next twenty minutes are a medical terminology filled blur as Scully and the attending physician discuss the best options for treatment. Mulder spends most of the time holding onto Will’s good hand and playing a mix of I-Spy and twenty questions.

He finally has a chance to talk with Scully alone when they take Will to have an X-ray. They’re standing outside the radiology bay, watching their son and the technician through the window. Scully starts the conversation.

“I’m sorry I didn’t call you earlier, Mulder, but the school phoned me as soon as it was clear he needed an ambulance and when I got to him there was just so much going on—“

“Scully, it’s okay” he says. She takes a breath, closes her eyes and leans into his shoulder. He wraps his arms around her then speaks quietly into her hair. “You’re okay. I’m okay. And believe me, Will is going to be more than okay. In fact, he's going to be ecstatic when he realizes that having a cast makes him the coolest kid at school.” Scully smirks, then falls silent. Everything they can’t say in words, they say now in the way their eyes meet. He looks down at her, she looks up at him, and he understands immediately. Hospitals are not good places for the two of them; Mulder suddenly realizes he can't remember the last time they were at a hospital for anything less than life threatening. He hugs her tighter and feels her arms circle snug around his waist in response.

Four hours, three cafeteria sandwiches, two cups of coffee, and one fibreglass cast later they are all finally released from the hospital into the dark winter night. Mulder carries Will in his arms while Scully brings their bags and the prescription painkillers supplied by the hospital pharmacy. Will is out cold, so it takes both of them to properly buckle him into the car seat in the back of Mulder’s car. They drive home together, Mulder at the steering wheel again and Scully in the back seat next to William. It’s late enough that even the busiest roads are quiet, and the glow of the streetlights on the accumulating layer of snow turns the city a soft orange. When Mulder makes a turn, he catches a glimpse of a bright blue cast and two heads of copper hair in the rear view mirror. He tucks the image away in his heart and sends up a quiet thank you to both God and the Universe that he's finally found a life where, even driving home from the hospital, he can be unbelievably happy.

**Author's Note:**

> I am of the firm opinion that there can never be enough family fluff with Mulder, Scully and William so here's my contribution that I wrote a couple weeks ago. I didn't tag William as a character in this because I didn't want to give away the twist. Hopefully it wasn't too obvious?  
> [EDIT]: This is going to seem stupid that I didn't realize it earlier, but I just remembered that in one of Scully's revival "daydreams" Will also breaks his arm. I'm not going to deny that there may have been unconscious inspiration for this from that scene. That being said, I never actually thought about that scene when writing and I definitely didn't intend for this piece to be any sort of fill-in-the-blanks thing for that daydream. (I just wanted to write some fun family fluff :) )


End file.
